Some years ago my mother-in-law gave me a navy blue sweatshirt for a Christmas present. The front contained words that no one could miss. The white letters centered at the top spelled out the topic: The Big Questions. Under that heading, three questions, also in white letters, appear: (1) Who Am I? (2) Why Am I Here? (3) What Is My Fate? The fourth question appears in pink: Where are the cookies?
Myra inserted a note into the collar of the sweatshirt. “You are now enrolled in the cookie of the month club.” Myra answered the last question by explaining to me that every month she would mail to me a box of chocolate chip cookies. She proved faithful to that promised gift until her illness prevented her from expending her diminishing energy at the oven.
The other three questions, however, cry out for attention. Countless books, products, advertisements, and movies continue to provide those answers for us. You are what you do—a teacher, a doctor, a home keeper, a lawyer.You are what we eat. You are what you log on through the Internet. You are ….
Perhaps answering the questions is not as important as asking them, searching behind them to discover meaning in our lives, and testing them to guide our paths through the good and the bad times. Our searching will undoubtedly alter our paths along the way, perhaps even change the destination.
Some of you, like myself, find that the Bible provides the most valuable map for the journey. Written by people of faith for people of faith, the Holy Scriptures paint a portrait of God and dramatize God’s commitment to us, even when we find ourselves wayward.
Perhaps, then, the usual spiritual questions listed on my sweatshirt should focus on God. Yet we face some of the same questions. Who is God? Why is God here? What is God’s purpose? Where is God going? As we struggle with the identity and purpose of God, the search changes the questions for us. Instead of Who am I?, we ask Whose am I? Instead of considering the quest to be a private matter, we ask, Whose are we?
And we might discover by the ways God reveals divine identity to us, that our own identity is not all that separate from our purpose in the world.
If God can help us discern the destination, we might even discover that we are already on the way.
This searching is not always linear. The path is not always straight. We cannot determine which conversations, which readings, which lectures or sermons, which encounters with people might become the vehicles God uses to move us along the path. We cannot start with theology and move to ethics. We cannot start with God and then turn to people. God uses all means to come to us—words, meals, companions, minds, hearts, compassion—and to make us a community. In those divine and social encounters, God enables us to know why we are here.
Searching, we are always on the way to become who we already are. Belonging,“Whose we are” unfolds as we go.
